phishing

The 48th EAST Meeting (National Members) was hosted by Europol at their Headquarters in The Hague on 5th June 2019. Presentations were made by the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and the European Serious Organised Crime Centre (ESOCC).

National country crime updates were provided by 18 countries, and a global update by HSBC. Topics covered included payment fraud and the evolution of payment technology, ATM malware and logical attacks, terminal related fraud attacks and ATM related physical attacks.

The leader of the cybercrime syndicate behind the Carbanak and Cobalt malware attacks, which infiltrated over 100 financial institutions in 40 countries, has been arrested in Alicante, Spain. The arrest followed a complex investigation conducted by the Spanish National Police, with the support of Europol, the US FBI, the Romanian, Belarussian and Taiwanese authorities and private cyber security companies.

Since 2013 the cybercrime gang have attempted to attack banks, e-payment systems and financial institutions using pieces of malware they designed, known as Carbanak and Cobalt. The criminal operation has struck banks in more than 40 countries and has resulted in cumulative losses of over €1 billion for the financial industry. The magnitude of the losses is significant: the Cobalt malware alone allowed criminals to steal up to EUR 10 million per heist.

Cashing out

The money was then cashed out by one of the following means:

ATMs were instructed remotely to dispense cash at a pre-determined time, with the money being collected by organised crime groups supporting the main crime syndicate: when the payment was due, one of the gang members was waiting beside the machine to collect the money being ‘voluntarily’ spit out by the ATM;

The e-payment network was used to transfer money out of the organisation and into criminal accounts;

Databases with account information were modified so bank accounts balance would be inflated, with money mules then being used to collect the money.

The criminal profits were also laundered via cryptocurrencies, by means of prepaid cards linked to the cryptocurrency wallets which were used to buy goods such as luxury cars and houses.

International police cooperation

International police cooperation coordinated by Europol and the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce was central in bringing the perpetrators to justice, with the mastermind, coders, mule networks, money launderers and victims all located in different geographical locations around the world.

Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) facilitated the exchange of information, hosted operational meetings, provided digital forensic and malware analysis support and deployed experts on-the-spot in Spain during the action day.

The close private-public partnership with the European Banking Federation (EBF), the banking industry as a whole and the private security companies was also paramount in the success of this complex investigation.

EAST has just published its first European Fraud Update for 2018. This is based on country crime updates given by representatives of 18 countries in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), and 4 non-SEPA countries, at the 44th EAST meeting held in Frankfurt on 7th February 2018.

Payment fraud issues were reported by fifteen countries. Seven countries reported increases in card-not-present (CNP) fraud related to ecommerce merchants in China. Phishing activity was reported by four countries and one of them reported phishing attacks through advertisements placed on social media sites. The EAST Payments Task Force (EPTF) issued a first Payment Alert in January 2018. This covered a phishing email sent to employees of banking and financial institutions, which contained malware intended to exploit the local network and gain access to Swift services.

ATM malware and logical security attacks were reported by ten countries. Five of the countries reported ATM related malware and one country reported the first successful Cutlet Maker cash-out attack in Western Europe. To date in 2018 the EAST Expert Group on All Terminal Fraud (EGAF) has published two related Fraud Alerts. Seven countries reported the usage (or attempted usage) of ‘black-box’ devices to allow the unauthorised dispensing of cash. To help counter these threats Europol, supported by EAST EGAF, has published a document entitled ‘Guidance and Recommendations regarding Logical attacks on ATMs’. It covers mitigating the risk, setting up lines of defence and identifying and responding to logical attacks. This is available in four languages: English, German, Italian and Spanish.

Card skimming at ATMs was reported by sixteen countries. The usage of M3 – Card Reader Internal Skimming devices is most prevalent. This type of device is placed at various locations inside the motorised card reader behind the shutter. Five countries reported such attacks. Skimming attacks on other terminal types were reported by five countries, all of which reported such attacks on unattended payment terminals (UPTs) at petrol stations. One country also reported the use of card shimming devices at POS terminals. To date in 2018 EAST EGAF has published three related Fraud Alerts.

Year to date International skimming related losses were reported in 40 countries and territories outside SEPA and in 7 within SEPA. The top three locations where such losses were reported remain the USA, Indonesia and India.

Five countries reported incidents of Transaction Reversal Fraud (TRF). Two countries reported a continued increase in such attacks and two countries reported new modus-operandi. To date in 2018 EAST EGAF has published two related Fraud Alerts.

Ram raids and ATM burglary were reported by ten countries and, to date in 2018, the EAST Expert Group on ATM & ATS Physical Attacks (EGAP) has published one related ATM Physical Attack Alert. Eight countries reported explosive gas attacks and six countries reported solid explosive attacks. The spread of such attacks is of increasing concern to the industry due to the risk to life and to the significant amount of collateral damage to equipment and buildings.

The full Fraud Update is available to EAST Members (National and Associate).

EAST has just published its first Payment Alert which covers an attack on a payment network through its member associations throughout Europe. This Alert relates to a recent phishing email sent to employees of related banking and financial institutions. Phishing is a social engineering attack that has become very popular and has caused severe damages and losses to companies and individuals.

This new Alert is an initiative of the EAST Payments Task Force (EPTF), a specialist task force for discussion of security issues affecting the payments industry and for the gathering, collation and dissemination of related information and statistics.

Rui Carvalho EAST Development Director and EPTF Chair said: “In June last year EAST changed its name to become the European Association for Secure Transactions to expand its remit beyond ATMs to include all terminal types and to also focus on payment transactions. As card skimming incidents continue to decline in Europe our focus is increasingly moving to Payment related cyber-attacks and Card Not Present (CNP) fraud issues which continue to rise. The EPTF Payment Alerts will help to bring focus on new and developing threats in these criminal areas.”

EAST Alerts contain sensitive information and are restricted to EAST Members (National and Associate). They are classified as AMBER using the variant of the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) adopted by EAST and an overview of the TLP classifications used by EAST is below:

EAST has published its second European Fraud Update for 2017. This is based on country crime updates given by representatives of 21 countries in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), and 5 non-SEPA countries, at the 42nd EAST meeting held at Europol on 7th June 2017.

Payment fraud issues were reported by ten countries. One country reported a new fraud type where the card Primary Account Number (PAN) is compromised in China, leading to fraud in China. In these cases the CPP is sometimes detected, but most of the time it is not. Another country reported data compromise due ‘vishing’ attacks (voice phishing), ‘phishing’ websites and ‘SMiShing’ (SMS phishing). The EAST Payments Task Force (EPTF) is looking at security issues affecting payments with a view to the gathering, collation and dissemination of related information, trends and general statistics.

ATM malware and logical security attacks were reported by fifteen countries. To date in 2017 EAST has published ten related Fraud Alerts. Two of the countries reported ATM malware and fourteen reported the usage (or attempted usage) of ‘black-box’ devices to allow the unauthorised dispensing of cash. Five countries reported ‘black box’ attacks for the first time, further indication that this attack type is continuing to spread. To help counter these threats Europol, supported by the EAST Expert Group on All Terminal Fraud (EGAF), has published a document entitled ‘Guidance and Recommendations regarding Logical attacks on ATMs’. It covers mitigating the risk, setting up lines of defence and identifying and responding to logical attacks. This is available in four languages: English, German, Italian and Spanish.

Card skimming at ATMs was reported by nineteen countries. The usage of M3 – Card Reader Internal Skimming devices continues to spread. This type of device is placed at various locations inside the motorised card reader behind the shutter. Nine countries reported such attacks and, to date in 2017, EAST has published six related Fraud Alerts.

International skimming related losses were reported in 49 countries and territories outside of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and in 9 within SEPA. The top three locations where such losses were reported are the USA, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Skimming attacks on other terminal types were reported by ten countries and five countries reported such attacks on unattended payment terminals (UPTs) at petrol stations. Two countries reported the usage of card reader internal shimming devices at POS terminals.

Eight countries reported incidents of Transaction Reversal Fraud (TRF). One country reported a significant increase in such attacks and two countries reported such attacks for the first time.

Ram raids and ATM burglary were reported by nine countries and nine countries reported explosive gas attacks. To date in 2017 EAST has published nine related ATM physical attack alerts. The use of solid explosives continues to spread and six countries reported such attacks. This is of increasing concern to the industry due to the risk to life and to the significant amount of collateral damage to equipment and buildings.

The full Fraud Update is available to EAST Members (National and Associate).

EAST has just published its first European Fraud Update for 2017. This is based on country crime updates given by representatives of 19 countries in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), and 5 non-SEPA countries, at the 41st EAST meeting held in Oslo, Norway on 8th February 2017.

Card skimming at ATMs was reported by eighteen countries. The usage of M3 – Card Reader Internal Skimming devices continues. This type of device is placed at various locations inside the motorised card reader behind the shutter. Five countries reported such attacks and EAST has recently published four related ATM Fraud Alerts.

International skimming related losses were reported in 45 countries and territories outside of the SEPA and in 9 within SEPA. The top three locations where such losses were reported remain the USA, Indonesia and India.

Skimming attacks on other terminal types were reported by eight countries and four countries reported such attacks on unattended payment terminals (UPTs) at petrol stations. One country reported the use of an M3 – Card Reader Internal Skimming Device at a public transport ticket machine, the first time this has been seen.

One country reported a new form of crime, ‘Cash-in’ or ‘Cash Deposit’ fraud. The criminals deposit fake banknotes into ATMs (where the cash deposit function is available) and then credit their cards or other accounts.

ATM malware and logical security attacks were reported by eight countries all involving the usage (or attempted usage) of ‘black-box’ devices to allow the unauthorised dispensing of cash. EAST has recently published seven related ATM Fraud Alerts. To help counter such attacks Europol has published a document entitled ‘Guidance and Recommendations regarding Logical attacks on ATMs’. This is available in four languages: English, German, Italian and Spanish.

Ram raids and ATM burglary were reported by nine countries and nine countries reported explosive gas attacks. The use of solid explosives continues to spread and seven countries reported such attacks.

Payment fraud issues were reported by five countries. One country reported an increase in both vishing and phishing attacks and another reported criminal abuse of the chargeback system.

The full Fraud Update is available to EAST Members (National and Associate).

An international payment fraud network responsible for large-scale misuse of compromised payment card data, prostitution and money laundering was taken down on 6th September 2016. The operation was conducted by the Italian Polizia Postale e delle Comunicazioni in close cooperation with the Romanian DIICOT, the General Inspectorates of the Romanian Police and Gendarmerie and Europol.

The criminal network, mainly made up of Romanian Nationals, used sophisticated ATM skimming devices which allowed them to compromise ATMs and deceptive phishing techniques to perform a high volume of fraudulent transactions in Italy (in the Milan and Monza areas). It is estimated that related losses ran into several hundred thousands of euros.

During the operation multiple house searches were conducted and 14 people were detained, of which 7 were arrested in Italy and Romania. Thousands of plastic cards ready to be encoded were seized in several locations in Romania and Italy, along with micro camera bars, card readers, magnetic stripe readers and writers, computers, phones and flash drives, and several vehicles.

Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) started supporting the case earlier this year and helped the involved law enforcement authorities in their efforts to identify the suspects. Operational meetings were held at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague and EC3 provided analytical support and expertise throughout the investigation including the deployment of a mobile office during the final action day to assist the Italian and Romanian authorities on-the-spot

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